Explaining EU-China Governance Relations at the Crossroads of the Trade, Climate and Renewable Energy Regime Complex.

This research project is the first attempt to explain the governance systems’ shortcomings in current trade, climate and renewable energy governance. The focus is on EU-China governance relations. Due to economic and environmental globalization and the rise of major developing economies, the governance of trade, climate and renewable energy has become increasingly complex and interrelated. Moreover, the swiftly evolving governance relations between the EU and China, two key actors in global trade, climate and renewable energy governance, witness serious stumbling blocks with negative effects, e.g. the relocation of energy-intensive production facilities and related GHG emissions to low-wage countries, the inability to establish a global carbon market, a variety of trade disputes and other trade-related issues including the development of renewable energy industries, to name just a few. Academic literature lacks studies that incorporate the entanglement of current governance systems and the increasingly complex nature of the governance relations between the two key actors to explain the aforementioned cross-cutting issues. This research project aims to fill that gap by analyzing the structural constitutive elements of the three regime complexes and the actor-specific parameters that define EU and China’s actor behavior as a means to explain and enhance our understanding of the critical interlinkages between trade, climate and renewable energy governance. 

While we already know from our previous research and from the small body of existing literature that a system of increasingly intertwined relations between China and the EU is developing (Belis & Schunz 2012; Bruyninckx et al. 2013, Chang et al. 2012; De Matteis 2010; Fox & Godement 2009; Van Eynde & Chang 2013), the academic literature lacks profound studies of the interactions between these two key actors across trade, climate and renewable energy governance as a gateway to assess the many standing stumbling blocks in and shortcomings of current global governance arrangements. 

Given that the restructuring of the global world order in general, and the rise of China in particular has increased complexities and interdependencies among actors involved in the issue areas of trade, climate and renewable energy, and fundamentally changed their strategic orientation, this research project opts for the theoretical lens of regime complexity, instead of the more conventional regime.

This research project will:

• map EU-China relations at the crossroads of trade, climate change and renewable energy
• develop an explanatory theoretical framework that looks at the structural constitutive elements of trade, climate change and renewable energy governance, in addition to analyze actor-specific parameters that define EU and China’s actor behavior related to the underlying and interrelated set of issues in terms of the connection between GHG emissions, the development of renewable energy technologies and international trade

• organize exchange between researchers of the Tsinghua and KUL research groups which are working on global environmental governance and EU-China relations
• extend this exchange to other academics and practitioners
• publish on this topic, thus filling a serious gap in the literature

Deliverables:

• two seminar KUL-Tsinghua (one in Leuven, one in Beijing)
• one seminar at an international academic conference
• one High Level Policy Seminar with academics, policy makers and business representatives
• two journal articles